I'm a highly technical consulting CTO with a commercial focus, working with fast-growing software teams in London.

My work

I help fast-growing tech teams solve problems and grow. I also perform technical due diligence
for venture capital firms, as part of their funding process.

I work with most of my clients for either half a day or one day each week,
but I also take on one-off projects. I try to always reserve some time
for new clients facing an emergency, so if you're in the middle of a crisis
please get in touch, and I'll do what I can.

I also work with clients on technical management problems, either alongside an existing CTO or acting
as the CTO. This work can include making key technical hires,
improving processes and communication between teams, making software teams faster
and more effective, or just maintaining progress while we find a permanent tech leader.

With many clients, I also help them solve general commercial problems: improving their understanding
of their customers, improving non-technical processes to increase revenue (e.g. sales and onboarding processes),
reaching product-market fit and coping with exponential growth.

I've worked on scalable web apps, beautiful responsive desktop apps and mobile apps, highly
optimised supercomputer software, robust B2B automation tools, digital hardware projects,
and everything else in
between. I've worked in a wide range of technologies and industries too, from prototypes to
fast-growing products being used around the world, so I'm happy
to jump into any project in any team that wants to grow fast.

My background

I've been writing software since I was 9, and have a degree in Computer Science and
Machine Learning from Cambridge University.

I've been a Founder/CTO and Consulting CTO for a variety of companies since 2010.

Some companies I've worked with

Cupris

Seedcamp

Upmail Solutions

Digital Fineprint

Octopus Ventures

BridgeU

Keekla

Stonehill Educational Consultants

UCL

Testimonials

There are many more recent testimonials on
my LinkedIn Profile
but here are some I received via email.

Sam Morgan,
CEO of Handcrafted

Hywel is a rare developer: communicative, responsive, and utterly
obsessed with the finer details.
He knows code inside out, but knows how to handle humans, too.

Richard Bridgwood,
Chairman at Si5 Spy Missions Ltd

Hywel is an experienced software engineer and CTO who also understands
the consumer, consumer behaviour and marketing. He is able quickly to
identify the gaps in a startup idea and produce creative ways to solve
them, saving business owners time and money.
His skillsets are not often found together and make a powerful
combination which I can highly recommend.

Sanjana Deb,
Founder and CEO of FreelanceBrains

He used his breadth and depth
of knowledge and experience to help me refine my business
ideas into a viable product. He provided sound advice
on the design and specifications and quickly responded to
my questions, of which there were many. He talks in clear
English rather than technical jargon so I always knew what
was going on and understood technical decisions.

Lucy Stonehill,
Cofounder of BridgeU

He has not only been a complete joy to
work with, but he has dramatically accelerated the pace of development, allowing us to progress
(tech & business dev.) in tandem.
Hywel is able to translate my
high-level and sometimes abstract reasoning into something tangible and actionable, showing a
clear and very important ability to both work with and digest the thoughts/wants of non-technical
business people.
My only regret is not discovering him earlier.

Writing

Building an 8-bit Computer: ALU

15 January 2019

It’s been a few months since my last update, but the registers are now all fully working. I’ve been slowly building the ALU, and tested it today. It worked first time!
[This post is part of a longer series about the build process for an 8-bit com

It’s been a few months since my last update, but the registers are now all fully working. I’ve been slowly building the ALU, and tested it today. It worked first time!
[This post is part of a longer series about the build process for an 8-bit com

This update is about some problems I encountered while building registers and an ALU for my 8-bit computer
capable of running Pong.
It’s part of a longer series about the build process for the whole computer.
I haven’t written a post in a long wh